Note: This essay is followed by some reader
reactions, and then by two other Parts which supplement the
first.

If there is one thing that the politically-savvy know,
it is that political viability requires a big tent -- ie, an
effort to include as many people as possible among its active
supporters. Those who are working for the preservation of Western
civilization and the race which created it are notorious for
failing to recognize this. This is extremely destructive because
our movement -- which I shall for convenience simply term 'the
Movement' -- is not merely regarded as on the fringe, but is at
the perigee of respectability -- not only because we have been
marginalized by the liberal media, but because so many of the
leaders -- to say nothing of the followers -- give the strong
appearance of being idiots, psychopaths, kluxers, hakenkreutzers,
or are not sufficiently courageous or informed to discuss the
issues most central to the Movement, particularly the Jewish
Question.

I have always stated my willingness to work with
anyone in pursuit of mutually-shared goals, and that, in a word,
is the Big Tent philosophy. But 'racial purists', who are a heavy
presence in the Movement, shun this philosophy on the seemingly
logical grounds that you can't work for white racial goals with
nonwhites, or those 'insufficiently white'. That, however, is
nonsense, and for one very simple reason: Western civilization is
a boon to everyone, and the white race, as the creator of that
civilization, must be supported in maintaining it, and indeed in
maintaining itself.

It is important to recognize that the Big Tent
philosophy carries with it an important implication, namely, that
it makes white racism respectable in face-to-face encounters.
That is, in arguing that Western civilization is good not just
for whites, but for EVERYBODY, white racists can now argue
without the least embarrassment that everyone should support our
race and assist its preservation. This, then, sweeps away the
shame which liberals have (wrongly) tried to attach to white
racism, and allows us to argue our case to whoever of whatever
race will listen to us. It is, in short, an exceptionally
powerful way to remove the 'hater' and 'intolerant' labels that
liberals have so assiduously attempted to attach to us.

Besides making white racism a political no-fly zone,
the major problem with racial purism is that it has attempted to
make people deny their own natural impulses. In particular, it
has sought to make whites either passively or actively hostile to
those of other races, whereas natural impulses would often
dictate friendship and even love. This is not of course to deny
the benefits of racial separation, which itself is a natural
occurrence, nor is it to endorse government race-mixing, which
has been the source of so many of our problems. But it is to say
that the exhibition of hostility to people simply on the basis of
race is primitive in the extreme, and that because simple
personal acquaintance makes such hostility difficult, this means
that people will tend to turn against a racial philosophy which
advocates such primitive hostility. Beyond this, when racial
purists trot out their cross-burning Kluxers and spastic-armed
goose-steppers, it is not only a political disaster for whites,
but gives aid and comfort to an enemy who will use such images to
bury us in mud -- and muds.

To put it bluntly, if we are going to successfully
prosecute a Big Tent philosophy, this will necessitate the
abandoning of such divisive symbols as swastikas, Confederate
flags, fiery crosses, KKK vestments and the like. (FYI, the fiery
cross is an ancient Scottish symbol intended as a call to arms --
appropriate in view of the fact that it originated as a racial
symbol in Tennessee, a place first heavily settled by the
Scotch-Irish.) This is not to say that these symbols are 'evil'
-- just impolitic. They are of a different era -- powerful for
good of a certain kind, and perhaps evil as well; but in any
event they send the wrong message today because of their
irrevocable associations with ideas that are now irrelevant and
divisive, if not actually frightening. ("We're from the
Gestapo and we're here to help you.")

As a philosopher, I have spent a good deal of time
working on the right approach to white racial philosophy. Much of
what I have written on this subject has appeared in my Weekly
Letters, but there is a substantial portion which appears only in
my books. It has been my goal to work the kinks out of racism so
that its supporters would know how to defeat liberal objections
and put racism forward as the respectable philosophy it is.
Seeing myself as having now largely completed this task, it would
seem that the main effort of white racists should now be directed
at mustering support from our own people -- selling our ideas, if
you will, to the people who most desperately need them but don't
seem to know it.

Selected Reactions to
the Big Tent Philosophy Essay

Thank you John. An interesting phenomenon is happening
over at the Jacob and Esau discussion group. I have been banned
for telling one of the more strident racialists to 'go fuck
himself'... this after he called my grandson a 'mongrel dog'....
Actually he is one of the more hateful members, and finally lost
it after another of his racist diatribes. So today, when I read
your Big Tent piece, I realized why I am never ashamed of my
political beliefs... my problem with other cultures is cultural,
not racial. Melanin is NOT my problem with blacks... it is their
majority culture, when they are the majority. THIS is the real
reason I was banned from the group.... It is my solemn belief
that most of the "hate" sites and discussion groups are
fully infiltrated and the most hateful voices are there to set
the tone and otherwise undermine the credibility of the
membership by keeping the tone sufficiently marginal. In other
words, I believe in my heart that the Jande group is there to
destroy MacDonald, by setting a tone that discredits the good
doctor. I have not participated much in the last year, but have
seen a trend that is unmistakable. It is ALWAYS the provocateurs
in any given group that are the 'plants'... in the case of
Jande... it's not Wilcox who is the enemy... he's just there to
bear witness.... I considered emailing Kevin, but thought better
of it... --CarolOnTheWeb

John, your [Weekly Letter on Big Tent philosophy]
resonates with my thoughts on race. I totally agree with you on
not using obsolete symbols that discredit our race. I would also
add that every white man, woman and child should carry a business
card in their wallets etc. stating on one side "I am proud
to be white person" and on the other side "The
achievements of our white civilization have benefited all
mankind." That little card is a way of bonding whites under
the big tent. It reinforces the pride we have in ourselves. It
reinforces our identity of who we are. It will give us the
strength to fight the zionists. Everybody can make them for
family members practically without cost. --Doug [?]

JEWS seduce pure young Christian boys (and girls)
because they love them and want to destroy them. THOMAS WOLFE

> The above quote applies to all minorities
regarding Aryan man and his culture. This is an instinct - the
same as winning and hunger and survival of the fittest (perhaps
Insects ?).

> Spengler made it clear that history is not linear
but that each Civilization that has appeared on he
world=landscape was unique, spiritual and ORGANIC.

> That which imbues a particular family/tribe/race
to band together with a sudden esprit de corps that results in a
great Organic=Culture can only be described as super-natural.

> Each of the great Civilizations arose from a
distinct gene-pool. Each Individual was a cell of that
RACIAL-CULTURAL-ORGANISM. Their collective SPIRIT was the SOUL of
the ORGANISM. Around them swelt the mere masses of people.

> All ORGANISMS have a life-cycle. Previous
Civilizations from the Babylonian to the Classic ALL died from
within through disease: miscegenation , treason and JEWS. Only
the Mexican perished by alien annihilation.

> It seems to me that your "Big Tent"
Idea may be useful as a political stratagem while we Aryans
attempt to cure the cancer within our sinews. But, the concept
that non=whites for their own interests will cooperate with
Whites is a fantasy.

> The West is moribund because its own Laws prevent
it from excising the cancer.

> There is a time for the pen - and a time for the
sword.

> I wouldn't be surprised if these Jews would not
someday become deadly to the human race. VOLTAIRE --James B

Big Tent Philosophy ***
PART 2 ***

As a philosopher, I have always focused my attention
on what might roughly be called 'the limits of knowledge'. In its
most general sense, this has involved scouring the landscape of
knowledge for contradictions, paradoxes, knowledge gaps,
suppressed information, and other irregularities which might
indicate dangerous misalignments of the ideological framework.
This is one reason why I have been attracted to the study of
controversial subjects like racism and Jews, because the very
reluctance which others have shown for investigating these
subjects suggests an enormous tectonic stress which, when touched
at the right pressure point, will begin an earthquake that will
flatten a huge expanse of the world's ideosphere.

Of the several objections which may be raised to
racial puritansm, perhaps the most important is reflected in the
situation of the world's most celebrated (and denounced) racist,
Adolf Hitler. Because Hitler was almost certainly one-quarter
Jewish, white racial puritans would be obligated by their own
creed to reject the man who has done more than any other to raise
the racial consciousness of whites; and plainly this is absurd.
Another situation which is very close to this is that of the
white racist who discovers that his genetic makeup has a touch of
the black, the Jew or some other race: To read such a person out
of the movement is bizarre at least, and inhuman at worst. A
similar situation is found in having friends or lovers of other
races: To require people to give these up in order to be part of
the pro-white pro-Western fraternity is unacceptable to most
people, and hence politically-unsalable. Which means that, in the
long run, it is politically suicidal.

But there is another problem with the racial puritans:
They seem to think that whites have reached the apogee of
evolution. This, however is nonsense, for with all the many
species which have come and gone from this earth, there is not
the least a priori reason to think we are the ultimate that
evolution can produce; and with a look at the white folks at the
low end of the Bell Curve, there is no a posteriori reason to
think so either. So if we grant that whites have a way to go on
the evolutionary scale, how exactly do the racial puritans think
they are going to get there? Quite frankly, until we get
sophisticated enuf to breed our babies in a long black tube
("In the year 2525"), an important part of the answer
is going to be 'genetic variety', and that is something which we
may well find most easily obtainable in other races.

But whether we are racial puritans or those of a more
liberal stripe, it is important to realize that the concern with
race is really imbedded in the larger controversy of the
'nature-nurture controversy', ie, whether a man's life is
primarily determined by his genes (nature) or his upbringing
(nurture). As it turns out, both sides in the controversy are
half-right - - both nature and nurture account for a significant
(tho yet inexactly- determined) proportion of what one becomes --
and this may account for the fact that the controversy has been
carried on by so many half-wits. (I mean, can anyone seriously
deny that either nature or nurture has a profound effect on the
individual?)

Altho most are unaware of it, the nature-nurture
controversy is rooted in fundamental beliefs about the
organization of society. Until the Enlightenment, it was
generally believed (at least by those who had beliefs on this
topic) that nature trumpted nurture, a belief which was the basis
of class divisions in which the nobles ruled, and the rest were
ruled. In particular, it was believed that superior genetics
validated the system of nobility and servility, and that because
the superiority would be passed on to offspring, political power
should thus pass by inheritance. This genetic theory was of
course masked by the theory of 'the divine right of kings': The
people were told that God endorsed the nobility, whereas it was
really Nature; but the nomenclature didn't really matter as long
as the essential truth was conveyed.

But then came the Enlightenment and the dethronement
of God, and with it a lot of very uncomfortable questions about
why the people should support a class of parasites who often
spent their time in debauchery and other sins when they weren't
making war on neighboring nobles and getting the peons killed.
From this questioning developed the notion of political freedom
and rule by virtue not of divine right, but by the consent of the
governed. Thus nature gave way to nurture, and rather than nobles
and peons it was decided that 'all men are created equal' -- not
literally equal, but rather equal in the sense that there were
not two classes, one of nobles and one of peons, but just one,
'the people'. America was the first nation where these notions
were actually implemented, and ever since that time America has
been an exemplar and standard by which all other nations have
been measured.

As it turns out, however, democracy -- the name we use
for 'rule by consent of the governed', or more properly,
'republican form of government' -- has not been an unmixed
blessing. Because men are corruptible, democracy has become
corrupted, and the situation has become worse and worse as
powerful men have learned to manipulate the system to their
advantage. For this reason, we have had at least one philosopher
-- Hans- Herman Hoppe -- propose a return to monarchy. And of
course we have had a recrudescence of hard-line naturists in the
form of racial puritans: Their philosophy does not exactly
advocate monarchy, but it does carry the suggestion that
political power should be determined by genetics, namely, white
genes.

As it happens, there is an unrealized irony in all
this. White racists have spent a good deal of time bemoaning the
fact that the Jews have gathered the larger part of world
political power in their hands, and that they are well on the
road to a genetically-determined New World Order in which they
shall be the nobles. But it is the aspiration of whites to create
their own nobility of sorts -- a dominance by their race -- so at
the same time that whites bemoan the dictatorship of the 'Jew
World Order' they themselves seek to establish their own, even if
it is a more benign one.

I shall of course support the White World Order, but I
shall be ever mindful of the wise words of Lord Acton: Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Big Tent 3: Old vs New
Guard Racists

If you like diversity, there is no better place to
find it than in the pro-white/pro-Western civilization movement,
which we shall refer to simply as 'the movement'. On one extreme
we have the Old Guard racists -- the KKKers and the nazis, to
whom I refer to as kluxers, hakenkreuzers and the
'gas-all-Jews-now crowd'. At the other extreme we have the New
Guard racists like me, who are well aware of the problems which
minorities are bringing to Western civilization, but who, on a
personal level, may nevertheless like Jews and Asians, and are
not generally hostile to other minorities, and are in fact well
aware that Jews have been very helpful to our movement (eg,
Benjamin Freedman, JG Burg, Paul Rassinier, Jack Bernstein, Mark
Lane -- to say nothing of those who have been 'accused' of being
Jews, such as Ernst Zundel and Ingrid Rimland). An even more
extreme of the New Guard type among movement people includes such
individuals as Sam Francis, Jared Taylor (of American
Renaissance) and the Vdare crew, who bash minorities without
ever daring to say the word 'Jew'. In between these two extremes
are a lot of folks who are not quite sure where they stand --
they may be riveted by the images of nazi power in Triumph
of the Will and see the advantage of force in returning the
West to a more pristine state, but find distasteful the
artificial hatred which is imposed by the nazis, kluxers and
their ilk.

For my part, I am a New Guard racist not merely
because that is where my experience and feelings lead me, but
also because I see it as the only politically viable route.
People have been taught to hate the nazis and kluxers so
thoroughly that to try to use the symbols of their movements to
unite white people is not merely useless, but counterproductive,
because people who go around burning crosses and wearing
swastikas are going to get pilloried, and their message -- if
they really have one -- is going to be lost in the noise.

Let me put it another way: The war for Western
civilization and its founding race is an information war -- we
have to educate people about the realities of what the liberals,
and particularly the Jews, are doing to us. So hitting people in
the face with widely-hated symbols like hakenkreuzes and fiery
crosses will close people's minds to our message, not open them.
But even if the symbols were not widely hated, they are
problematic because they convey an ambience of naked power rather
than reason -- they do not seek to convince, but to force. This
is not to say that there will not be times in the future when
force should be used; it is rather to say that such time is not
the present.

The difference between New Guard types like myself and
the Old Guard may perhaps be encapsulated by our attitude toward
the use of the word 'nigger'. This word, like the swazi or the
fiery cross, carries with it the implication of both hostility
and physical threat. I, in contrast, use such terms as
negroidals, little brown bruthas, and numerous others which are
primarily joshing rather than hostile, and which do not imply a
physical threat. What this does is to make possible a dialog with
other races and 'enemies', when -- as is often the case -- our
policies may pursue mutually-shared goals (eg, segregation). As
one can see from the Diversity section of my webpage, I have had
several such dialogs.

While we of the New Guard do not hesitate to recognize
the contributions of Jews and other minorities to the movement,
and even to welcome them to participate, we also extend a hand of
friendship to those at the other extreme. This is not merely
because -- unlike so many others in the movement -- our
libertarian nature is repelled by the thought of enforcing
conformity, but also because, from the practical standpoint, we
need all the allies we can get. Perhaps a better way to explain
it is to observe that poor whites are more likely to have had
extended contact with blacks and other minorities because of the
whites' financial inability to escape the inner cities, and thus
they are more likely to know first-hand the destructiveness of
these people. The result is that these unsophisticated whites end
up among the philosophically-unsophisticated nazi and klanner
groups, and thereby set themselves up not only as the most vocal
of pro- whites, but also as the easiest prey for Mo Dees and the
other anti-whites and anti-racists to present as the essence of
the movement. For this reason I have tried to educate pro-whites
in the intellectual subtleties of our movement, with the hope
that this education would rub off on the extremists and help them
to see that their cross-burnings and Roman salutes do a lot more
harm than good.

But if I am liberal in extending a hand of sorts
toward both ends of the spectrum of our movement, there is one
way in which I am distinctively NOT liberal, and that is that I
am unwavering in my belief that the Jewish Question must be
addressed squarely and thoroughly. In fact, the forces with which
our movement is contending simply cannot be understood unless we
factor Jews into the equation; and while some of us may feel that
the Jewish swamp must be drained, while others may feel that
insect repellent is sufficient, we at least cannot afford to
avoid examining the pervasive role of Jews in the Western world's
woes. In doing so, however, we need to remember that the Jews may
not be the ultimate force behind our troubles, but only a tool
for some eminence grise such as the Rothschilds or the
Banksters or the Bonesmen or the Masons -- or for that matter,
extraterrestrials -- who are using the Jews and their
organizations for their own nefarious purposes. Since there seems
to be more than just an off-chance of this, we have yet another
reason for the movement to develop Jewish contacts who may be
able to open doors for us that would otherwise remain forever
closed.

Now before concluding this essay, I think it is useful
to analyze the differences between the Old Guard and New Guard
racists. In my view, the Old Guard is characterized by the
following points:

* A preference for authoritarianism and militarism

* A greater rigidity of beliefs

* An intolerance of ambiguity

* An emphasis on hatred of outsiders rather than love
of one's kind

* A preference for physical force, rather than the use
of reason and an effort to work within the system

* A tendency toward internecine warfare and
competition with fellow racists, rather than cooperation on
constructive projects

* Poor interpersonal skills

* A tendency to look backward toward a glorious past
rather than to plan for the future

* A materialistic rather than a spiritual outlook

Most of these characteristics overlap to some extent.
For example, a greater rigidity of beliefs and intolerance of
ambiguity makes both for a greater tendency to hate those who are
different, and a greater tendency to fight with fellow racists
and to be unable to cooperate with them; poor interpersonal
skills, authoritarianism, lack of a spiritual outlook and a
tendency toward physical force also leads to fighting; and a lack
of cooperation means that not much constructive gets done,
leaving the only vision as that of a glorious past rather than
one of a glorious future.

Altho I reject the Old Guard philosophy out of
personal distaste, I do not wish to say that they are 'wrong' in
some moral sense. The ultimate test of right or wrong is the
question of what works best to facilitate the survival and
prosperity of the white race and Western civilization. In my view
the New Guard has the best chance, because the New Guard can best
operate under the constraints of the present-day liberal
zeitgeist. In particular, the New Guard has the following
advantages:

* Authoritarianism works well only in situations of
dire physical necessity. It worked well for the nazis in post-WW1
Germany, but it will never work in the affluent West where people
can live quite well off welfare checks, church food kitchens and
dumpster diving.

* The dogmatism implicit in rigidity of beliefs makes
it difficult for the Old Guard to deal with the fact that, in the
words of James Russell Lowell,

"New occasions teach new duties;

Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward,

Who would keep abreast of Truth".

* Intolerance of ambiguity is characteristic of
limited intelligence. It is what might be called the 'digital'
philosophy that "you are either fer us or
agin' us" -- that everything is black or white,
with no intervening shades of gray. The reality, however, is far
more analog: There are few things not surrounded with varying
shades of gray. But refusing to admit ambiguity can be a great
comfort, providing you are not discomfited by an ambiguous
situation. And that can be trouble indeed; for ambiguity in
sufficient quantity can drive people literally mad. In
particular, IP Pavlov discovered that dogs who were conditioned
to be rewarded when shown a circle, but conditioned to receive an
electric shock when shown an ellipse, became psychotic as the
ellipse was drawn closer and closer to that of a circle. In the
present world there are many ambiguities which will function for
the Old Guard as Pavlov's ever-rounding ellipse: The continuing
change in the gene pool due to race-mixing, foreigners such as
Asians or Indians who are quite as competent as whites, music and
other artistic creations whose ethnic origins are ambiguous, and
so on -- all these, in addition to such problematic situations as
whites married to those of other races, the opposition of
American ethnics to open immigration, and the help of Jews in
exposing harmful Jewish behavior, are likely to drive a lot of
Old Guard members up the wall and onto the psychiatrist's couch
-- with a Jewish psychiatrist at that.

* Any way you peel it, the onion of hatred stinks.
However, when programs are put in the more positive terms of love
of one's people and culture, it is a lot easier to market them;
but the Old Guard has got the mud of hate so firmly smeared all
over themselves as to look bad front, back, upside down and
sideways. Nobody needs this kind of handicap if they are going to
promote a program to save whites and Western civilization.

* The use of physical force which is implied in the
goose-stepping, Roman- saluting, cross-burning rituals of the Old
Guard is not only completely useless, but actually
counterproductive. This is not post-WW1 Germany, and we are not
confronted by rioting Bolsheviks trying to take over the
government. The war is an information war, and must be fought as
such. Old Guard rituals do nothing but provide fodder for the
cameras of Mo Dees and his ilk, who parade these images in the
media and make the Old Guard look like they are somewhere between
ignorant hillbillies and out-of- control animals.

* The Old Guard loves the idea of street-fighting
nazis with their whips and chains; but since there is no street
fighting to be done in the present day, they end up eating their
own -- if not in fisticuffs, then in internet forums and hostile
email exchanges. It is fine to have an abundance of testosterone,
but it is worse than useless if it cannot be controlled; and the
Old Guard is too busy trying to 'control' their friends to bother
controlling themselves.

* Very few in the Old Guard have heard of Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and
fewer yet would think that it has the least relevance to what
they are supposedly doing. Which may just be telling us that what
the Old Guard really wants to do is to sit around swilling German
beer, yelling 'nigger' and 'kike', and constructing fantasies of
what it would be like If Only Hitler Had Won. This, in addition
to the inflated ego trips which they take at the expense of their
comrades, virtually guarantees the extinction of any camaraderie,
and thus the possibility of united action by any but a collection
of zombies and their local 'fuehrer'.

* People with a spiritual dimension have a distinct
advantage over those who do not, because they can see the
struggle for the survival of their race in a long-term
perspective that those who 'live for today' cannot appreciate.
This is probably the explanation for the survival of crazy
religions -- and most religions are indeed crazy: They force
their members to work for the long term, and this promotes the
survival of their group. My own religion -- if you can call it
that -- is a spiritualist one, and has the advantage of being
supported by scientific investigation. The facts of spiritualism
have convinced me that there is most likely something beyond
terrestrial human existence, and for this reason I see the
struggle for the white race and Western civilization as something
beyond my own meager existence. Perhaps spiritualism will provide
the key to turning the struggle around.